One of the blessings of my journal-making habit is that it forces me into St. Vincent de Paul’s to look for books I can recycle. I am often amazed at the books others throw away, and how such treasures can resell for the lesser half of a quarter.

I picked up Jeane Eddy Westin’s Finding Your Roots on one such adventure. With a 1977 copyright, I honestly did not expect much from this book. I thought the Internet Age had rendered many of the old paths obsolete. What used to require physical digging through piles of paper now needed only a few clicks on some genealogy site. Right? When I found this book, however, I was struggling in particular with the stubborn green root of my Irish family.

I can’t say that I was entirely mistaken about the book being obsolete. Truth be told, the book is full of resources that I’ll never have occasion to use (however, a quick check on the internet would verify whether a particular resource was still current). But it is full of resources, tips, examples and incredible information that I will–and do–use. Each chapter deals with some general topic of ancestry, and is then broken down into nationality, with specific examples of how that topic looks in that culture.

In chapter two, for instance, Westin writes about the importance and heritage of names and the vast clues to be found in a given name or surname. Then in a list of nationalities, under “Scottish,” she writes of an old tradition of the men taking their wives’ surnames when they marry. If your roots are Scottish, don’t you think this might be an important thing to know?

I was pleasantly surprised with this dusty handbook. What began as a long-shot crack at finding an Irish clue quickly became a fascination not only with my family roots but with genealogy itself. I would encourage anyone interested in her family tree to get her hands on this gem. I am thrilled to add this to my personal library.

I do, however, feel bad that I paid only $0.12 for it. It’s worth at least the $3.50 printed on the cover.